The Hegemony of English and Strategies for Linguistic Pluralism: Proposing the Ecology of Language Paradigm

In this chapter, Yukio Tsuda problematizes the taken-for-granted dominance of the English language in international and intercultural communication. Critical scholars have interrogated inequalities among groups, nations, and cultures in terms of political systems, economic structures, and the production and distribution of cultural contents across countries. However, language is oftentimes assumed as a neutral means of communication and is seldom questioned as a form of domination that sustains the unjust global power relations. Tsuda attributes the hegemony of English to neocolonialism and globalism. At the level of international interpersonal communication, the dominance of English functions to perpetuate the neocolonialist structure and has three serious consequences: (1) linguistic and communicative inequality to the great disadvantage of the speakers of languages other than English; (2) linguistic discrimination and social inequality; and (3) colonization of the consciousness. At the level of international mass communication, the domination of English is encouraged by, and in turn further facilitates, globalism, which obscures three consequences of the current form of globalization on the world culture: (1) Anglo-Americanization, (2) transnationalization, and (3) commercialization of contemporary life. Tsuda advances the Ecology of Language Paradigm as a counterstrategy to the hegemony of English, whose three central tenets are (1) the right to language, (2) equality in communication, and (3) multilingualism and multiculturalism.